I think, in a rare moment of perspicacity, of Virginia Woolf and the remark she made in a letter to her shortly-to-be husband, Leonard: “Knitting is the saving of life”. The letter was written in 1912 after a long period of mental ill-health. If anyone understood the importance of time alone, and the quiet rituals that help to stitch a self back together, it is Woolf – even though, for her, they were ultimately unsuccessful